Greece Only EU Country to See 2022 Flight Activity Beat 2019 Levels

Greece was the only country in the EU to see flight activity in 2022 exceed pre-Covid 2019 levels marking a 1 percent increase, said Eurostat this week.

Eurostat data confirms previous reports and ACI Europe data.

Elsewhere in the EU however, commercial flights recorded in 2022 were still below 2019 levels with the greatest declines seen in January down by 34 percent compared with the same month in 2019, February (-33 percent), March (-27 percent) and April (-19 percent).

Source: Eurostat.

Significant recovery was seen with falls between 14 percent and 16 percent between May and December 2022 while the most significant recoveries were recorded in August and October (both -14 percent).

Besides Greece which was the only country to increase commercial flights throughout the summer season and exceed annual 2019 levels, countries fast approaching full recovery were Portugal, still down 4 percent compared with 2019, Luxembourg (-8 percent) and Croatia (-9 percent).

Source: Eurostat.

On the downside, countries making the slowest recoveries were Slovenia (-41 percent), Czechia (-35 percent), Finland (-33 percent) and Sweden (-31 percent).

In terms of airports, Frankfurt recorded the largest decline in the number of commercial flights in 2022 compared to 2019 down by 33 percent or by 131,723 commercial flights over 2019.

Munich airport followed marking a 17 percent decline (-130,715 fewer flights compared to 2019), Düsseldorf (-33 percent, -84,542), Copenhagen Airport (-38 percent, -60,520) and Brussels (-45 percent, -55 824).